Shokouh Mirzadegi شکوه میرزادگی

SHOKOOH MIRZADEGI was born in 1944 in Tehran, Iran. She studied child psychology and began her career by running a successful mixed school in her birthplace. Her short stories and poems appeared in Iranian literary magazines as early as the second half of 1960s. Her first collection of short stories was published in 1973, just before she was arrested, tortured and put in jail for two years, accused of conspiring to overthrow the Iranian monarchy. She was only released when she accepted to appear on the national TV and plea for pardon. It took her a couple of years to recuperate from this ordeal and restart her literary activities. Soon she published two more books and wrote several articles on the plight of women in her country. This coincided with the advent of the Islamic Revolution which put her back in prison for a short while and forced her to abandon her country and seek asylum in Britain. For fourteen years she has lived in London and was active as an out-spoken writer on the issues of democracy, freedom of speech and feminism in Iran. She edited several periodicals and published literary works of substance and value during these years. In 1990, she married Esmail Nooriala, a well-known Iranian poet and literary critic. Ever since, they have published a cultural magazine, Puyeshgaran, which has been influential in Iranian intellectual circles outside of Iran. She finished and published her novel, That Stranger within Me, in 1993 in London. The book proved to be a best seller and a very popular work of art to be reprinted two more times within a year and attract two major Iranian literary prizes (Baran and Sepas). Shokooh and her husband, who has rendered the present translation of this novel into English, immigrated to the United States in 1994 and have been living, working and writing in Denver, Colorado ever since.